The Real Story Behind the Phony Canceled Health Insurance Scandal

[Daemonaquila]

41. I agree with this excellent story in all ways but one...

In the debunking of the rabid anti-ACA myths, a real thread of classism is starting to creep in.

"[The $54/mo plan was] all I could afford," she told me...

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation premium calculator, Barrette... is eligible for an annual tax credit of up to $3,967 a year, which could get her a silver plan on the exchange for $234 a month (in cost to her), or a bronze plan, with slightly higher out of pocket costs, for $97 a month. True, with the bronze plans, she’d be paying $43 a month more, but in return, she would have true protection and access to health care, not sham coverage... Barrette should be cheering the death of her old plan.

Yes. Real coverage. Excellent pricing. No doubt. However, for many people even doubling their cost to some mere 2-digit figure is still not affordable. This is the rub - we have a much better system coming into place, and the value is phenomenal, but for many people even $10 or $20/mo makes all the difference in the world, and it is not right of us to be scoffing at their complaints. Will lower income folks eventually be better off? No doubt. That doesn't mean it isn't a crisis for them today. Proponents of ACA aren't doing it any favor by making this argument.

I lived off $75 or less per week in my early college days. I really needed to see a doctor several times, but I couldn't even afford the very small quarterly student health services fee. Paying it would've made the difference between running out of food before the end of the week, or losing the lights, or getting evicted. Thankfully I got creative and found the sliding scale community health services clinic instead, where I was able to get a better deal. I paid maybe $10 or $20 once or twice a year when I was sick. That still caused problems but they were more manageable. I'm glad I'm now financially comfortable, but there are a lot of people out there who aren't. Many of them are my clients. Many of them have literally been dying because they do have some access to health care, but when push comes to shove that last $10 that pays for medicine or an office visit might as well be $1000, or $10,000. So let's not be dismissive, and instead acknowledge that some people are going to have a harder time dealing with the ACA. We might not be able to fix that for years, but it's not just some myth.